RE: [Axiom-legal] Licensing Aldor

[Page, Bill]

On Tuesday, November 21, 2006 12:09 AM Tim Daly wrote:
> ...

Concerning my proposal to distribute the Aldor source code under
the terms of the Aldor Public License:
 
> when i contemplate your action it really comes down to this....
> 
> respect.
> 

Ok.
 
> 
> if it frustrates you enough to want to publish the source code
> send Stephen a note and tell him that you plan to do this. give
> him the courtesy of notice and a chance to respond. and if he
> explicitly says no then you need to respect his decision.
>

You will recall that when I first proposed this last March, I did
in fact send exactly such an email to Stephen. He did not reply.
I was prepared to proceed with the plan until Mike Dewar responded
to my email which contained a copy of what I sent to Stephen. I
understand that Mike has as much right to object to this course
of action as anyone else associated with aldor.org. Right?
 
> in theory he could sue you. he won't. NAG won't. nobody will,
> for all of the reasons i gave.
> 

That is reassuring. :-)

> 
> gentlemen respect each other. Stephen may respect your opinion
> and agree with you. but if Stephen decides to disagree you need
> to respect his opinion.
>

I agree with you. I only wish he would take the time to agree or
disagree with me. :-( But we are all do what we can, I guess.

> Stephen's failure to respond to the community is costing him
> dearly on a professional level and he is gradually losing the
> respect he richly deserves, losing it one day at a time.

Actually I think his publications speak extremely well of him no
matter what the situation with Aldor. I do deeply respect his work
on computer algebra and his research group at the University of
Western Ontario. I think they do very good and interesting work.

> but publishing the code without direct request will cost you
> also. you will lose the respect of the community.
> 
> frankly, it isn't worth it.
> 

Ok, that's makes it at least 5 against my proposal and none for
it. I lay it to rest. But I am not finished yet...

--------

I know there are quite a lot of people who actually already have a
copy of the Aldor source code. Perhaps some even still have access
to the original cvs archive. Probably many don't. Suppose that we
were to try to establish an "amnesty" for all people who currently
hold copies of Aldor? Some people may even have local changes which
fix some bug or add some new feature that was needed in their own
work. For whatever reason they may not have wanted or may not have
had the chance to contribute these changes to aldor.org.

We could invite them to join a new "Aldor for Axiom" Developer Group
and provide a new closed source code repository containing a copy
of the Aldor sources in /trunk from which developers could establish
their own branches. The stated purpose of this group would be to
prepare new binary versions of Aldor specifically for use with Axiom
on the various platforms on with Axiom runs. This version of Aldor
would be included in binary form with the Axiom source code
distribution in order to allow all Axiom users the option to use
Aldor as the library compiler.

Verification that someone already had a copy of Aldor could be
done for example, by asking them to provide some selected phrase
from the source referenced only by location as a password to the
repository.

The source code itself would not be publicly distributed outside of
the Aldor for Axiom developer group but under the terms of the Aldor
Public License, all changes to the code would be made available to
aldor.org and also made available for public access in the form of
changesets against /trunk. Of course authors of the changes would
be properly accredited with the changes that they submit.

I believe that this new proposal would not violate in any way either
the spirit or the letter of the existing licensing conditions for
Aldor. If or when aldor.org does release an official open source
license for Aldor, the Aldor for Axiom repository could then be made
available under the terms of this new license.

Actually, I have absolutely no idea how many potential developers
and Axiom users would be willing to accept these conditions, but I
think it might be worth a try. At the very least it would keep alive
the possibility of using Aldor with Axiom.

--------

> respectfully yours,
> t
> 

Thanks. "Back at you", as they used to say ... :-)

Regards,
Bill Page.